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Saturday, 3 February 2018

Silk Screen Printed Silhouette Quilt ~ Progress

It's almost two years since I showed you how the silk screened silhouette is progressing. This quilt has been four years in the making, with the majority of the time spent deliberating how to attack each upcoming stage.

My daughter and I have worked on this quilt together, with Tash doing all the silk screen printing a long time ago...

Dear Pam,this is going to be a beautiful quilt ... in addition to a community work with your daughter, I think that's great. The motives are so beautiful and I like it a lot. I would only quilt in the seam shadow of the blocks.I wonder how he will look finished.

This is so beautiful Pam. I always struggle with thread color with quilting. Since each square has it's own border, can you or would you want to quilt a "square" for each? It would not have any connecting quilt lines. Would that be enough to attach all layers?

I love to hand quilt so my advice might not help (fail miserably at machine quilting!) However, if you want black I agree with others about ‘framing’ blocks, which would pop those silhouettes too. A bit of hassle to use a machine and not continuously quilt tho I imagine, but the effect would really be in theme.

Thanks so much for the suggestions, Joy. I've only done hand quilting on one quilt. I did think of doing it again for this quilt, but I'm hoping to finish soon, so will run out of time. So machine quilting it will be. Stopping and starting is a bit of a hassle, but I may have to.

Beautiful quilt top Pam! I would choose a variegated thread that has all the fabric colors, except the black. Start by stitching in the ditch vertically over the whole quilt and then do free motion around each applique. The black applique will look a bit puffy after you quilt, so keep that in mind if you don't want to quilt on the black.

This looks amazing Pam! I wouldn't use a thread for quilting that would detract from those fabulous silhouettes, so agree with the others that black is probably out. Maybe a neutral, Aurifil do a silver-grey, that would blend in to the background would be a better bet.

Im still thinking about this amazing quilt - I love the colours with the black and the vertical rectangles/stripes - I’ve had a similar thought to Daryl above, to use a variegated thread based on the yellow violet and aqua of the background. Guterman do a cotton one that I know of. You could do long vertical bubble rectangles and when between blocks of silhouettes you could do short wide bubble rectangles - some short horizontal ones could cross the long vertical ones in places. Then on the reverse black backing you would have these amazing criss cross of rectangles outlined in a peek of colour around black square spaces. Probably overthinking it :/

I bought a few reels of variegated Guterman thread the other day, Joy - thanks to the suggestions. You're not overthinking at all. It's been great to read and think about all the options - many of which I would never have thought of. The intersecting bubble rectangles is a very creative idea, which I'd like to try at some stage - if not on this quilt, then another in the future.